Disability Insurance: Error Rates and Gender Differences

We show the extent of screening errors made in disability insurance awards using matched survey-administrative data. Type I errors are widespread with large gender differences. Work-disabled women are 12.8 percentage points more likely to be rejected than work-disabled men, controlling for health conditions and demographics. Gender differences arise because women are assessed with more residual work capacity. We model the SSA decision-making process and estimate that gender differences in screening errors originate from lower utility losses from incorrectly rejecting women. Finally, noise in self-reported work limitation leads to an overstatement of screening errors, but the gender difference remains.